Louvre has topped the list of the most visited art museums of 2012, according to the Art Newspaper. The publication’s annual survey found 9.7 million people visited the Louvre in Paris – one million more than 2011. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art was the second most-visited venue, with three London museums taking the third, [...]
Tilda Swinton is sleeping in a fitted glass box at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) this month. Museum goers are able to peer in on Tilda Swinton while standing just feet from her padded glass chamber as she appears to lightly turn in slumber. The Oscar-winning actress’ month-long performance art of public napping [...]
Jazzman Bebo Valdes, a central figure in the golden era of Cuban big band music, has died in Sweden at the age of 94. Bebo Valdes started his career in the nightclubs of the Cuban capital, Havana, in the 1940s. A pianist, Bebo Valdes also composed and arranged songs, and led two big bands, as [...]
Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, one of Africa’s best known authors, has died at the age of 82 after a brief illness. A statement from his family said Chinua Achebe’s “wisdom and courage” were an “inspiration to all who knew him”. Chinua Achebe’s 1958 debut novel Things Fall Apart, which dealt with the impact of colonialism [...]
Mezzo-soprano Rise Stevens, who sang with the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan for more than 20 years, has died in New York three months shy of her 100th birthday. Among Rise Stevens’ greatest roles was the title character in Carmen in the 1950s, which she sang for 124 performances. Rise Stevens also had a brief Hollywood [...]
Vladimir Tretchikoff’s Chinese Girl portrait, thought to be the world’s most reproduced painting, has fetched £982,050 ($1,570,000) at Bonhams auction in London. The sum, which includes a 12% buyer’s premium, was around twice what had been predicted by auction house Bonhams. It was thought the portrait of a young Chinese girl with green-hued skin and [...]
British horror author James Herbert, best known for classic The Rats, has died aged 69. James Herbert’s publisher, Pan Macmillan, confirmed that the best-selling author died at his home in Sussex, UK, this morning. No cause of death was given. Jeremy Trevathan, the author’s editor for 10 years, described him as “one of the keystone [...]
Anastasia Volochkova, a Bolshoi former soloist, claimed female dancers at the famous Russian ballet theatre were forced to sleep with wealthy patrons. Anastasia Volochkova accused the Balshoi Ballet’s general director of turning the company “into a giant brothel”. Outspoken Anastasia Volochkova, who has dabbled in TV talent and talk shows, was fired from the Bolshoi [...]
A rare Chinese bowl bought for $3 at a New York state garage sale has sold for $2.2 million at Sotheby’s auction. The 1,000-year-old Ding bowl from the Northern Song Dynasty was bought for $3 in 2007. The bowl was displayed on the mantelpiece of a New York family who had no idea of its [...]
Japanese architect Toyo Ito will receive 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize, a prestigious award, known throughout the world as architecture’s highest honor, often compared to Nobel Prize. The formal ceremony will take place at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts on Wednesday, May 29. The location was designed by another Pritzker [...]
Sergei Filin, the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, may recover enough of his sight to work again, doctors treating him at a German hospital have said. Sergei Filin was the victim of an acid attack in January that damaged his eyes and disfigured his face. He appeared at a news conference alongside [...]
After seven years of investigation, auctioneers found out that the violin thought to be the one played by the band leader of the Titanic as it sank is genuine. Wallace Hartley and his orchestra famously played on as the Titanic sank in 1912 and were among the 1,500 who died. In 2006, Titanic specialist auction house [...]
The Vienna Philharmonic orchestra is expected to publish details of its history during the Nazi era in response to accusations of a cover-up. The orchestra has come under fire for not acknowledging alleged links to the Nazis. The Vienna Philharmonic orchestra says it will also give more details about a ring of honor it presented [...]
Bolshoi Ballet soloist Pavel Dmitrichenko and two other men have confessed to an acid attack on Sergei Filin, the company’s artistic director, say Moscow police. Pavel Dmitrichenko – the alleged mastermind of the attack – was detained on Tuesday with Yuri Zarutsky, suspected of carrying it out. A man accused of driving a getaway vehicle [...]
Bolshoi Ballet soloist Pavel Dmitrichenko has been detained by police, suspected of ordering an acid attack on artistic director Sergei Filin. Dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko is being held along with Yuri Zarutsky, who is suspected of carrying out the attack, Russia’s interior ministry says. Sergei Filin’s eyesight was badly damaged when a masked attacker threw sulphuric [...]
Russian police in Moscow have brought in for questioning a suspect in the acid attack on the Bolshoi Ballet’s artistic director, Sergei Filin. A brief report on the police website said the unnamed person was “one of the suspects” in the attack on January 17, which shocked the arts world. “The necessary investigative measures are [...]
Italian composer Armando Trovajoli, who wrote the scores for around 300 films, has died aged 95. During a long career Armando Trovajoli worked with some of the world’s great jazz musicians, including Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis. Armando Trovajoli’s most famous song was a romantic serenade to Rome so popular with tourists that [...]
Renowned American classical pianist Van Cliburn has died aged 78. Van Cliburn died at his home in Fort Worth, Texas on 27 February, after suffering from bone cancer said his publicist and long time friend Mary Lou Falcone. In 2010, President Barack Obama awarded him the National Medal of Arts. Van Cliburn was diagnosed with [...]
More than 50 unpublished poems by Rudyard Kipling have been discovered by a US scholar. Thomas Pinney found the manuscripts in a number of places including a Manhattan House that was being renovated and among the papers of a former head of the Cunard Line. He described it as a “tremendously exciting time for scholars [...]
Writer Stephane Hessel, the former French Resistance fighter whose 2010 manifesto Time for Outrage inspired social protesters, has died at the age of 95. Stephane Hessel died overnight, his wife Christiane Hessel-Chabry told France’s AFP news agency in Paris. A German by birth, Stephane Hessel was imprisoned in Nazi camps during World War II for [...]
Cleotha Staples, a member of the chart-topping gospel group The Staple Singers, has died at the age of 78. The family group had eight US top 40 singles in the 1970s, including the number ones I’ll Take You There and Let’s Do It Again. The group enjoyed success on the Stax label and Curtis Mayfield’s [...]
American blues guitarist and leading figure in the Chicago blues scene Magic Slim has died at the age of 75. Magic Slim had more than 30 albums to his credit since releasing his debut, Born On a Bad Sign, in 1977. “There’s probably not another bluesman who had quite the repertoire that Slim had,” said [...]
British author Hilary Mantel, a double Booker Prize winner, whose latest books are set in the Tudor court, dismissed Kate Middleton as a “machine-made” princess, “designed by committee”. Hilary Mantel, 60, compared Kate Middleton unfavorably to both Anne Boleyn – one of her historical heroines – and to Princess Diana, insisting both had more personality. [...]
A Chilean court has ordered the exhumation of the remains of poet Pablo Neruda, as part of an inquest into his death in 1973. Pablo Neruda, a left-wing Nobel Prize winner, died 12 days after a military coup replaced the socialist president Salvador Allende with General Augusto Pinochet. The poet’s family has always maintained that [...]
French police have detained a woman accused of defacing iconic Delacroix painting Liberty Leading The People at a branch of the Louvre Museum. The woman was held after being seen scrawling a graffiti tag on the painting, a Romantic masterpiece painted in 1830 to celebrate a French uprising. The museum in the northern town of [...]
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Obama administration knew IRS was targeting conservative groups since June 2012Obama administration knew since June 2012 about an investigation into complaints from conservative tea party groups that they were being harassed by IRS, and the probe was…
Zahra Shahid Hussain shot dead in KarachiSenior Pakistani politician Zahra Shahid Hussain has been shot dead in the southern port city of Karachi. Zahra Shahid Hussain was the senior vice-president of Pakistan's…
Rome: Thousands rally to oppose Italy's austerity measuresThousands of protesters, led by trade unionists, have rallied in Rome against the policies of Italy’s new coalition government. Wielding red flags and placards, they urged…
Pope Francis condemns money cult in his first major speech on financial crisisIn his first major speech on the financial crisis, Pope Francis has called on world leaders to end the "cult of money" and to do more for the poor. Free market economics had…
Steven T. Miller: Acting IRS commissioner resigns over targeting conservative groups for special scrutinyActing head of the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Steven T. Miller has quit after it emerged his staff singled out conservative groups for extra scrutiny, President…
France enters its second recession in four years France has entered its second recession in four years after the economy shrank by 0.2% in the first quarter of 2013, according to official figures. The country’s economy…